When Google wanted to get into the game of selling social ads across all platforms, it decided to acquire Wildfire, a company that had the market on lockdown. Since the acquisition last July, little has changed as far as what Wildfire offered, how it offered it and there was little to no impact for current customers.
Today, the Wildfire team has announced that its first major shift is upon us, cutting off standalone campaigns that were a hallmark of its tiered offerings.
Here’s what the team had to say about the “new direction”:
…We’ve decided that we’ll be retiring our Basic, Standard, and Premium promotions after June 30th. We’ll continue to offer promotions as part of our Social Marketing Suite. We understand that some of you will still want to run standalone promotions, so we’re glad to know that there are other companies dedicated to helping you do this. But we’ll be sad to see you go. Of course, we’d love for you to stay in the Wildfire and Google family, so if you want to learn more about the Wildfire Suite, then please give us a call at 888-274-0929.
Basically, Google now wants you to purchase the full suite, which starts at $2,500 a month, according to a member of the Wildfire team in the comment section of its post. The suite allows you to push unlimited promotions, pages and messages. If you still want to do standalone social marketing campaigns, the company is now suggesting that you take your business elsewhere. Where else can you go? Well, Google and Wildfire aren’t endorsing any one service, but suggest that you give them a call with any questions that you might have. Which sounds like a setup for a sales call about their “Suite.”
If you’re already set up to do standalone campaigns under its Basic, Standard or Premium accounts, you can run them until June 30th. If you had planned a campaign that runs past that time, you’re out of luck and better find another service or pay up for the Suite. Luckily, all of the leads that you’ve collected using Wildfire can be exported, and if you’re running on a Basic account, they’ll upgrade you so that you have access to the export feature. That’s nice.
The post itself ends on a nice note, thanking its customers for believing in them. The last sentence, however, makes it sound like Wildfire is ready for people to exit and go elsewhere: “We hope you choose to continue to work with us in the future.” Some had feared that something like this would happen as Google rolls Wildfire’s offering into its own services, but on the bright side, it’s a huge opportunity for smaller companies. Current Wildfire clients aren’t so happy thus far, according to some of the comments:
Nice doing business with you over the past few years and congrats on becoming part of a large and successful multinational corporation. We’ll be with your competition where a-la-carte pricing is still the norm, but if you ever reverse this policy you know where to find us. Been great.
Two services, Votigo and Offerpop, have already reached out to us to claim any wayward Wildfire clients. Know of any others? Share them in the comments.
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